Telecommunication operators today use charging systems to determine charges to their subscribers which use their services, e.g., circuit switched voice, SMS, MMS and/or GPRS packet switched data. For charging purposes, subscribers often have different options, e.g., a prepaid option or a post-paid option which are used to charge for a particular service event.
Existing charging systems handle data describing subscriber accounts which is not related to a particular service event, e.g., data identifying a subscriber or a subscriber group, data describing tariff plans, etc. Such data will also be referred to as account data in the following.
Existing charging systems also handle dynamic, event-related data. One example would be a count value reflecting the number of SMS service events or MMS service events per subscriber. Another example would be a fund value to be used for charging of dedicated services, e.g., GPRS data traffic of a subscriber.
Usually, event related data is described according to charging resources types and charging resources. E.g., charging resources types are counter type, accumulator type, dedicated account type or sub-account type or buckets. Each charging resource type is instantiated to at least one charging resource, e.g., a counter, a fund value memory, etc. For one charging resource type there may be several instantiations of charging resources.
To associate charging resources with subscriber accounts there exist at least three options. A first option is that subscriber accounts refer to related charging resources. A second option is that charging resources refer to related subscriber account(s). A third option is that subscriber accounts refer to related charging resources which simultaneously refer back the subscriber accounts. In view of memory efficiency current charging systems use the second option. The reason for this is that at subscriber accounts no memory needs to be allocated. Instead, the charging resource itself keeps all the data that is needed in order to make it work.
For charging of service event there is executed an analysis of combined account data and event-related data with respect to the service event to identify one or more charging resources being connected to one or more subscriber accounts. A first step in such analysis is execution of a selection process to identify a charging resource for the service event. Then follows a data base query to find the selected resources connected to the subscriber account.
However, existing solutions handle charging resources per subscriber account according to pre-determined definitions. This is also true for so-called subscriber groups where all members of the subscriber group use a common definition of their charging resources.
Therefore, when executing a selection process with respect to a service event the selection process needs to be executed according to the pre-determined definitions, or in other words on the level of the pre-determined definitions, both for individual subscribers and subscriber groups. The reason heretofore is that the selection process needs to be aligned with the underlying definitions of charging resources.
While this approach is viable with a limited amount of charging resources it gets more and more difficult to manage when the number of charging resources and services increase, even if the charging resource definitions are made on a group level.